III.
Kant’s evolution, which makes dogmatism to result from scepticism, was an entirely moral evolution, substituting for speculative the authority of practical reason. The evolution we have now to deal with is of a quite different character; it consists in passing from objective to subjective knowledge, from the object to the subject. Even if all that has been just said on the side of criticism were true, there is at least invariably one existence that remains untouched by it: this existence is that of the thinking subject, and this existence is incontestable. What appears to us as a circle to the circumference are objects, in the centre is the subject. We do not confound ourselves with our sensations, we distinguish between them and ourselves. Can, then, this consciousness of the thinking subject be no more than the transformation of external events? No; for all exterior events reduce themselves to one—i.e., motion; and all interior events to one—i.e., thought. There is no transition or transformation possible between one of these phenomena and the other. “We acknowledge,” says a distinguished savant, Professor Tyndall, “that a definite thought and a molecular action of the brain occur simultaneously, but we do not possess the essential organ, nor even a rudiment of the organ we should require in order to pass by reasoning from the one to the other.” Thus, then, the subject exists and is not reducible to the object. Shall we say that this subject is nothing more than a sum of phenomena? But what adds up these phenomena? A common bond is needed. Have we any consciousness of such a bond? “Yes,” replies our author, “we call internal states of consciousness, past, present, or possible; we attribute them to ourselves, we say that they take place within us. What does this mean if the ego to which we refer them is only their succession? How comprehend the continuity of consciousness?” In a word, our author admits absolutely that the ego has a consciousness of its own being, as distinct from its sensations and from external objects. “It is,” he says, “an activity constantly modified, but yet always one, which dominating its states refers them to the unity of one same consciousness.”
Here, then, we have, without possibility of mistake, the fundamental doctrine of the spiritualistic philosophy of Descartes, Leibnitz, Maine de Biran, and Jouffroy. By laying down this principle the author believes himself enabled to reinstate that metaphysic which criticism had condemned. We, for our part, have no doubt of this; but we fail to see how the author can at the same time hold this principle and the Kantian principle of idealism. The “Kritik” of Kant bears upon the subject as well as the object; according to it both the one and the other are unknowable and incomprehensible noumena. The human mind is but a complex compound of sensations and categories, the unity of which is reached by the same process as the unity of external objects. No doubt Kant is, indeed, obliged to concede something to the ego, the cogito as he calls it; but he does not very clearly say what it is; it is not a substance, not a category, not a result. “It is,” says he, “the vehicle of all categories.” What can be more vague? The metaphor shows both how little disposed Kant was to assign its due part to the ego—how vague and uncertain he left it, and at the same time how he was forced to take it into account. The ego, the active, continuous, self-conscious ego, is the rock ahead to Kant’s philosophy. For how dispute the consciousness of substance and of cause, when one admits “a continuous activity dominating all states of consciousness and reducing them to unity?”
What, then, is substance, according to our author? It is, he says, something that does not change considered as the necessary condition of that which changes. What is cause? Is it not the power of initiating any given movement? Now, this same consciousness which gives us the ego as a continuous activity, does it not in so doing give it us as the condition of phenomena and as the productive cause of movement in voluntary efforts? Consequently, to grant that the ego knows itself as ego, and as activity, is in point of fact to restore the notions of cause and substance which had been done away with. At most all that has been gained from criticism is the difficulty of comprehending substance and cause without objective, that is, material form. Its results, then, amount only to the incomprehensibility of matter. But the cause of metaphysic is not to be confounded with that of matter; metaphysic is not tied to the existence of materialism; and were it even led in self-defence to deny the very existence of matter altogether, one does not see that such a negation need cost it much. Descartes did not hesitate to place the existence of bodies in doubt, in order to save the existence of spirit. Malebranche did not believe that the existence of bodies could be proved except by revelation. Leibnitz did not think that bodies were more than phenomena, the reality of which was spiritual. There is, then, no common cause between the interests of metaphysic, or of what Kant calls dogmatism, and the question of material objectivity, which may be left open without compromising the fundamental basis of things. How, then, can our author appear to assign the victory to criticism while in reality depriving it of its chief support by restoring to the ego the immediate consciousness of itself as a being, one, active, permanent, and continuous? Kant may have played this game, because, in effect, outside of criticism, he only admits moral reasons for reinstating dogmatism. But although our author follows him too on that ground, he nevertheless enters in point of fact upon an entirely different path when he invokes immediate consciousness as a guarantee of the existence and activity of the mind. These are not moral and practical, but metaphysical reasons. Metaphysic, then, independently of morality, has its own proper foundation, which, far from being affected by criticism, is the very foundation of criticism itself. This foundation once admitted, are we entitled to declare metaphysic no science? We hold that we are not. Doubtless, if by science be meant an absolutely adequate knowledge of the object, such as mathematics affords, metaphysic cannot pretend to such knowledge; but we have here only a question of degree. The perfection of a science is not the same thing as its existence. A science is what it is by reason of the difficulties its objects present, and the imperfections of its method; but it is science none the less if it possesses a given object and a solid foundation. Now, such a foundation is admitted by our author when he admits the intuition of the ego by itself; and hence it is no longer a mere question of words to refuse the name of science to the series of deductions that may be drawn from a principle which has been admitted valid.
If our author grants the foundation of metaphysics by adhering to the Cartesian principle of the immediate knowledge of the mind by itself, he at the same time acknowledges its most elevated term by defending the existence of an absolute perfection, a supreme type of spirituality. “If in ourselves,” he says, “relatively perfect ideas realize themselves in virtue of their relative perfection, why should not the total perfection from whence they are derived exist? There is nothing contradictory in such an absolute.” Is not this to admit the doctrine of the perfect being as the Cartesian School has constantly expressed it? but is it enough to say that the total perfection may exist, enough to inquire why it should not exist? Should we not go further, and say with Bossuet, “On the contrary, perfection is the reason of being.” Here we are forced to allow, in the views, or at all events in the expressions of our author, a fluctuation and uncertainty which now impel him towards the critical, and now towards the metaphysical position, without his arriving at a sufficiently decided conclusion. “The absolute,” he says, “would then be the ideal of moral perfection. But by such a definition do we not compromise its reality?” To which doubt he replies that the “true reality is precisely the ideal.” Now, this is an equivocal and obscure reply, demanding explanation. No doubt the reality claimed for the perfect being is not a sensible and material reality. But there is another than material reality—there is a spiritual, such as is manifested to us in the reality of consciousness, in the immediate activity and intuition of our being. We may, indeed, style this sort of existence ideal, in opposition to material existence; but the expression is incorrect, for that which, properly speaking, is an ideal existence is one merely represented to the mind when thinking of something that no longer exists, does not yet exist, nor ever will exist. Now, the question is, whether the moral absolute, of which we have just had the definition given, belongs to the first or to the second of these ideals; whether it exists for itself, or only for us, in so far as we think it, and while we think it. For a mode of existence like this, dependent on our own thought, is very far from being the supreme reality; it is only a modal and subjective reality. Thus our author, we see, expresses himself too uncertainly. Nevertheless, his own principles sufficiently authorized him to declare himself with more precision. Indeed, we have seen, on the one hand, that he, with Mr. Herbert Spencer, affirms the existence of the absolute; and, on the other hand, that he acknowledges the concept of total perfection to be in nowise contradictory. Granting so much, must not absolute perfection be the reason of the existence of the absolute, as relative perfection is the reason of the existence of the relative? If, however, any choose to call that supreme perfection the Idea, with Hegel—as Plato calls it the Good, Aristotle the pure Act, Descartes the Infinitely Perfect Being—we have nothing to object, so long as it be clearly understood that the idea shall signify the identity of the thought and the being, and not merely a subjective conception of the human mind.
To sum up: it results from what has been already said, that spite of his powers of thought, the author has not been able to escape a certain fluctuation between criticism and spiritualism, and has only arrived at a contradictory compromise between the two conceptions. From criticism he borrows the ideality of the notions of space, time, substance, cause, and the idea of a moral absolute founded on purely moral motives. From spiritualism he borrows the existence of the absolute as the necessary correlative of the relative, and the consciousness of the subject which perceives itself in its continuity as the cause of its phenomena; and, finally, the idea of a total perfection, which may, without involving any contradiction, have the reason of its existence in itself. These two orders of conception are not so closely connected as they should be; too much is conceded to criticism, too little to metaphysic; and M. Liard inclines overmuch to give to morality the exorbitant privilege of deciding between the two.